I am at a loss to understand why the many patriots who defend the natural right of self-defense in the Second Amendment often do not extend this fundamental right to society.
Perhaps it’s because those who occupy the heights of media, entertainment, academe and government over-emphasize individual rights. They do so without regard to the effect their expansive view of personal rights (typically so-called “human rights”) has on societal well-being.
Reason rejects a supposed individual right if it harms society.1
People gather together in political society to defend themselves. As John Locke wrote, “the first and fundamental natural Law, which is to govern even the Legislative itself, is the preservation of society.”2 While it’s doubtful that many of the delegates to the various state ratifying conventions of 1787-1788 ever read a word of Locke, God’s light of reason prodded them to unite for the first purpose of any community: self-preservation. To preserve individual liberty, the community must first defend itself.
For the purposes set forth in a Preamble thirteen distinct peoples entered into a compact of self-government. Through their Constitution they formed a larger political society, that of the United States. This community established institutions to defend through standing laws, their Lives, Liberties and Estates from domestic and foreign threats.3
We the People are duty-bound through society to secure not only our personal well-being and liberty, but to leave behind institutions capable of preserving the civil society and liberty for future generations, our posterity.
These republican, societal responsibilities are fundamental to our national existence. Unlike monarchies and despotisms, which ultimately exist for the preservation of the monarch or despot, republics are built on, and exist for, the preservation of the community. Without a monarch, there isn’t a monarchy. No despot? No despotism. And yes, without a broad and solid civil community, a civitas of common traditions and equality before the law, wave goodbye to the American republic.
The American community has been remarkably reluctant in recent decades to fend off threats. Over time, several of society’s creatures, its inferior institutions of government, assumed superior roles. These servant institutions known collectively as the Deep State turned the powers granted to them back on the society they were designed to protect. Instead of nurturing the community they subvert its Constitution, traditional families, its Christian foundations, and flood it with hostile third-worlders. Society is in a death-struggle with a Deep State that fights for its survival against the public good. Unless society, as a society, stands up to its rebellious servants, the Deep State will soon overthrow its master, the rule of law, and with it We the People.
Those who regard themselves as Second Amendment Constitutionalists ready to defend themselves and their families yet are reluctant to defend their community in an Article V Convention of the States, would do well to reexamine their responsibilities. Time is running out. Voting is inadequate effort. An Article V COS is the last foil of society, the sole remaining peaceful means to overcome the Deep State and preserve liberty for posterity.
1. Beyond the obvious and unalienable right to life, Scotus-declared “rights” to chemical contraception, abortion, and homosexual marriage encourage individuals to terminate the next generation.
2. Locke, J. (2010). Two Treatises of Government, Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge: University Press. 355. Second Treatise § 134.
3. Ibid., 350, Second Treatise § 123.